Audiobook Giovanni Boccaccio, a Biographical Study

The book begins with an exhaustive inquiry into Boccaccio's birth and parentage, weighing the evidence that he was born out of wedlock in Paris of a French mother. Hutton then traces his early years in Florence and his dispatch to Naples by his merchant father, where he spent six years in commercial houses before abandoning trade for the study of Canon Law. A central portion of the study is devoted to his meeting with Fiammetta in the church of San Lorenzo in Naples on Holy Saturday, detailing the slow and difficult courtship, the long service of love, and the eventual triumph of his passion. The narrative follows his return to Florence, his literary labours on the Filocolo, the Filostrato, the Teseide, and the Ninfale Fiesolano, and his subsequent return to Naples during the troubled reign of Queen Giovanna. Hutton recounts the dramatic events surrounding the murder of Andrew of Hungary, the descent of King Louis into the kingdom, and the devastation of the Black Death. Later chapters address Boccaccio's diplomatic missions for the Florentine Republic, his intimate friendship with Petrarch, his work on the Decameron, and his late years of scholarship and study in Certaldo.